Blademaster combat

So there are obviously threads in this section posing questions and getting answers for various situations. I wrote up a synopsis of how a Blademaster can kill and wanted to post it here for future people to be able to read should they need it! If you want to add anything, or tell me I'm wrong and correct me, please feel free to do so!

Thanks

Blademasters

As a Blademaster, your main
goal is to kill through stacking bleeding which allows you to
BrokenStar your enemy. To BrokenStar, your enemy has to have a
minimum of 600 bleeding. There are several ways to do this, and also
some techniques that do not require any bleeding prep at all. Below
will be a synopsis of these strategies.

We have several stances at
our disposal. We have Doya, Thyr, Mir, Arash, Sanya (in order you get
them in TwoArts). Doya is a slow stance that does increased limb
damage, better accuracy for a speed reduction. Thyr is the fastest
stance, with reduced limb damage. Mir is the slowest stance, with
greatly increased defense but with the limb damage of Unstanced.
Arash is slower than Thyr but faster than Sanya, but does tremendous
damage. Unfortunately, your damage taken also increases tremendously
and this stance should be used only when you are sure you are capable
of surviving shortly after. Arash gives the highest limb damage per
hit. Sanya has increased Shin generation, increased offense and
unchanged defense.

Primarily in 1v1 or group
situations, you will want to use Thyr/Sanya/Mir/Arash/Doya in terms
of importance. Obviously this will change depending on the situation
you find yourself in.

Firstly, you have to be able
to stick Impaleslash on your opponent in order to get any of the
bleeding levels you want. Impaleslash makes clotting use more mana
thereby making it less effective overall.

The next few strategies will
be with pre-impaleslash. To do this, you have a few options: You can
pommelstrike/strike knees on your opponent using a long balance. You
can use paralysis stacking (pommelstrike/strike neck 3 times with
lvl3 band, 4 times with lvl0 band unhindered) which allows you to
beat herb balance. If they are paralysed you can impale. When you
impale, you are guaranteed a balance of action before they writhe (IE
Impaleslash, bladetwist). You can also do this with voidfist and
pommelstrike/strike neck. When your opponent shields, you can
raze/strike knees and you will get balance before they do thereby
allowing you to impale as well. Figure out some other methods on your
own, there are lots of options!

First, you have to prep both
of the legs by legslashing on alternate sides. Left/Right into a
“prep” which allows you to slash on either side and break both
legs. You will need to practice this more than anything else, as
breaking limbs simultaneously is absolutely required on anyone who
knows how to fight a Blademaster. To bypass parry you can use the
paralysis stacking as detailed before, or you can use your Striking
ability Airfist. Airfist gives about a 50% chance of bypassing parry,
but 100% against Monk guarding.

When you legslash/strike
knees to break both legs. You will impale, and you will get the time
to bladetwist 4 times (assuming you don't make any mistakes). This
usually equates to ~700-800 bleeding depending on your opponent. They
will writhe, and you will get balance to BrokenStar immediately
before they stand. This is the easiest kill method, but also the one
that works less and less as you get into more advanced fights.

As before, you'll prep both
legs for the break. Also, in this method you will be prepping their
torso. You can do this by centreslash, or by compassslash. You will
want to slash to break torso, then slash to break legs/prone
immediately after. With a broken Torso, each bladetwist does an
increased amount of bleeding. You'll want to impale and on balance
Impaleslash. You will have time/balance to bladetwist twice more
after this. They will writhe off, and you can then re-impale or
Brokenstar depending on their bleeding. I usually recommend impaling
once more and twisting, just to try to make sure. When they writhe
they will stand and can then leave the room, so choose carefully.
This method is a bleeding burst that usually outstrips your enemies
attempt to clot.

This is a slight variation
of the above. In this scenario you also prep their head and torso to
break in one slash. Most enemies will apply to their head when you
break torso/head. You can then break legs/prone and impale right as
they apply to their leg. In this method you have the same options as
above. Impale/Impaleslash/Bladetwistx2/(Impale or BrokenStar). What
this does is ensures that they do not have the salve balance to heal
their torso before you can break their legs.

This scenario is the hardest
to execute correctly, as your enemies will have many options and
times to get away from you. Here we will prep both legs, head/torso,
and both arms. You will want to break Head/Torso then Arms, then
Legs. Depending on your speed (band), you can force them to apply to
arms before you break legs, which gives you time for an extra
bladetwist after your impale – or you can break legs immediately
after arms, whereby they do not apply to arms but immediately to legs
after their head. This sequence gives you the option of locking, or
brokenstar due to the broken arms. Most enemies will not stand around
long enough to allow this, but you can use some breaks as decoys
(break arms randomly, let them leave and come back to break
head/torso>leg/leg, etc).

In this scenario we will be
using more Fists, and switching stances. You will want to prep both
legs for break, in whatever stance you are comfortable with. At this
point, you will want to run away and switch your stance to Arash. We
run away for two reasons: Give the impression that you were worried,
and they do not know you switched stance. When you go back, you will
want to Flamefist your enemy. Flamefist negates rebounding, and makes
it so that you can string attacks without worrying about hitting it
for a time. Here we will break legs.

Now, after we break legs, we
want to immediately begin balanceslash/strike sternum. This is the
highest damage attack that Blademaster has in a PK setting. While
your enemy is prone, Arash cannot miss. With a double leg break you
will either get 4(lvl 0 band) or 5(lvl 3 band) hits will prone. With
that you can do balance/sternum 3x, and Multislash as your finisher.
Now, you have two options to increase your chances of landing this
kill – your infuses.

Infusing ice will hit the
enemy with shivering>frozen>disrupt. Using this in conjunction
with your leg break, you can throw off salve timing by them applying
caloric. Also, using Ice infuses turns your damage into Ice, which
there are few ways to mitigate.

Infusing fire will set the
enemy ablaze. Everytime your fire infuse hits after they are
emblazed, you get a small damage hit from burning them.

Usually, the Ice setup works
a bit better than the Fire setup, as there are more resistances to
Fire damage than Ice damage.

You can also engage after
your multislash, so that if they do survive and stand up and try to
run, they will also get hit by engage.

You have a few options for
Locking. Primarily you can prep both legs, prep both arms, break
legs, break arms so that they will cure both legs and stand before
even applying to arms. This is 9s-10s of time that you can stack
afflictions. Pommelstrike/strike is your fastest way of afflicting.
Hypochondria is currently the only way that a Blademaster can give
Impatience to seal a lock, therefore you need to afflict that first
and ensure that you stick it. Impatience, Weariness, Anorexia,
Slickness, Asthma (paralysis/prone) are the afflictions that you need
to be sticking.

Another method is stacking
using pommelstrikes. This is more difficult as most classes can
hinder you enough. However if you unhindered enough ever 4th
pommelstrike (lvl0 band) or every 3rd (lvl3 band)
affliction beats herb balance. Meaning you can do neck, neck, neck,
asthma – and your asthma affliction immediately follows a paralysis
cure. Meaning you can then hit paralysis again and now you have
“stuck” asthma.

Another option is through
Voidfist. Voidfist has a chance of making an eaten herb have no
effect. Through this you can stack quickly because they are unable to
cure anything. Given enough afflictions and time, you can lock them.

Blademaster has a lot of
options and avenues to setup kill strategies. Work on your own
methods and see what you can come up with!

Just so it's all in one place: As an additional note for prepping limbs, which was one of the harder parts for me to understand when I was trying to figure out blademaster, there are only three possible scenarios to achieve a simultaneous break with one arm/leg/centreslash. For any possible health value, one of these three should be the case:

1) Alternating sides (left-right-left-right-etc) will double-break on an odd-numbered slash.2) Alternating sides will double-break on an even-numbered slash.3) One compass to each limb, then alternating slashes will break on an even-numbered slash.

So if you're doing alternating slashes and suddenly one of your slashes only breaks one limb, compass the other limb (to break it and reset the count), then compass both, then you know it will double-break one arm/leg/centreslash sooner than it single-broke.

So if you do left-right-left-right-left and that last left breaks just the left limb (rather than both), compass the right to break it and reset its damage, compass the left and the right once each, then it'll double-break on left-right-left-right.

You'll still want to try to make/find a proper limb counter so you don't have to do a test-break first, but once you know this, if your counter is ever wrong and you single-break, you'll know exactly what you need to do to prep for the double-break without any further testing against the person (so you'll only ever be wrong about the correct prep path against someone a maximum of one time).

Balanceslash is also redundant because it doesn't stack balance loss, so if they're already off balance it won't actually do anything. As Atalkez said, pommel is your fastest twoarts ability paired with a strike and you want to use that to prone.

If's a good guide! the only prominent thing you didn't add is draining mana with a typical brokenstar setup, and then if they don't have enough bleeding to brokenstar you can just transition into a lock due to the lack of mana making them unable to use focus (pseudo impatience) or doing a sleep lock because they can't use insomnia.

@Atalkez I was wondering if you had any recent thoughts on this guide as some of the stuff on it is pretty outdated. For example, you can no longer spam pommelstrike to stack afflictions since it no longer stuns and it isn't faster than herb balance unless you have a band, though I'm not sure if bands improve pommelstrike speed. (I can understand why that was nerfed).

When do you try to go for locks, if you do so at all?

What kind of strikes do you do for your limb prep? Do you just alternate slashes or stack certain numbers of strikes on each limb before moving on.

@Atalkez I was wondering if you had any recent thoughts on this guide as some of the stuff on it is pretty outdated. For example, you can no longer spam pommelstrike to stack afflictions since it no longer stuns and it isn't faster than herb balance unless you have a band, though I'm not sure if bands improve pommelstrike speed. (I can understand why that was nerfed).

I have been fosuing more on riftlocks, lately. Broken arms/asthma/slickness and no herbs left to cure is a lock assuming they haven't applied to arms to be able to restore.

What kind of strikes do you do for your limb prep? Do you just alternate slashes or stack certain numbers of strikes on each limb before moving on.

I use hamstring, prone, feet, neck primarily. More often than not it's hamstring or prone, though, just because it's easier to keep hamstring stuck that way and the slashes aren't fast enough to 'stack' anything anyway.

Only thing outdated on the guide really is that Vardrax strike got added, and Voidfist isn't as good for RNG locks as it used to be.

So usually, a smart fighter, will leave for the duration of impaleslash. As it only lasts x amount of time. I have tried to pommelstrike/para x 3, impale, impaleslash and they run away. So we get into this continuous loop. Secondly and Lastly, how do you deal with people who tumble on doublebreak legs, impale?

And is there some hidden use for thunderstorm/blizzard? The eq/shin cost and the afflictions for what you get seem a bit minimal. Maybe have a team of blademasters do it in unison but you'd just hit each other.

When I tested thunderstorm, sometimes it gave paralysis instead of epilepsy. Maybe blizzard deals more damage the more frozen someone is??

I thought it did, but was recently told otherwise. So I have to lean with probably not, until I test more.

And is there some hidden use for thunderstorm/blizzard? The eq/shin cost and the afflictions for what you get seem a bit minimal. Maybe have a team of blademasters do it in unison but you'd just hit each other.

Nope, it's primarily a damager. They got buffed to do more damage, to give them some use, as before they never saw any live action. You can use it for a burst-finish after you do a damage setup on someone who stands and shields, as it bypasses shield and hits like multislash damage-wise, with no chance to miss.

When I tested thunderstorm, sometimes it gave paralysis instead of epilepsy. Maybe blizzard deals more damage the more frozen someone is??

That's an idea I was going to classlead, actually. If the target is burning, frozen then the corresponding burst does more damage (annihilate/blizzard). That's not currently the case, though.